French Patent 86 09102 describes a connector for a flat cable designed to electrically connect the tracks of two printed circuits or the tracks of a printed circuit with one flat cable or two flat cables between these tracks.
The connector described in this patent comprises a shape memory alloy collar inside which the conductor elements are superposed so as to be in electrical contact. The collar exerts a pressure on the electrical elements under the effect of a predetermined temperature, which ensures electric continuity between each superposed conductor.
However, such a connector can be used only for flat cables with parallel conductors in a given plane, and thus in effect can ensure the connection only between flat cables carrying low voltage signals.
Such a connector does not have the characteristics required for high voltage linkings or the morphology adapted to this type of linking enabling connection to be effected between flat shielded cables constituted by a stack of three conductors.
In fact, the need to reduce the spatial requirement of high voltage cables capable of carrying significant electric pulse energies has led to replacing coaxial cables of a cylindrical cross-section by flat shielded cables comprising a stack of three conductors, two of these conductors being low voltage equipotential conductors situated externally. The production of such cables falls within the technology relating to printed circuits. In fat, the three conductors comprise conductive layers of limited thickness (typically 35 .mu.m) disposed on nonconducting layers.
However, the replacement of conventional cylindrical section coaxial cables with flat shielded cables constituted by a stack of three conductive tracks disposed on nonconducting layers has given rise to the need for systems for connecting two cables of this type, or one cable of this type and one cable of a different type. Such a system must be as small as possible to ensure (a) that contact is made without thermically or mechanically altering the conductive tracks or their non-conducting support, and (b) that, the system, when it is in a partial vacuum, is completely sealed off from the air around the contact pick-up zone of the high voltage conductor and/or between the pick-up zone of the high voltage conductor and the pick-up zones of the low voltage conductors.
Applicants have invented a connection system which overcomes the drawbacks of systems of the prior art, and which also has the required dielectric qualities enabling it to transfer a significant amount of pulse energy. By way of example, this energy is about one period of 1 .mu.s under a voltage of about 3.500 V with an output approaching 1000 amperes irrespective of the pressure, the latter possibly being approximately the pressure corresponding to the minimum of Paschen curves.